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Comment Re:headed in the wrong direction (Score 4, Interesting) 230

So long as people ... live in areas with above-average background radiation

Which is to say, forever. By definition precisely one half of the population live with background radiation above the median level. That can be stated without any knowledge whatsoever of what that median level is or what the distribution is. It is a truism. I'm not aware of the precise statisic for percentage living with above average background radiation, but for example we do know that the natural background radiation in Finland is about three times that in the UK.

Comment Re:meanwhile overnight... (Score 1) 503

Ukraine had some in their possession from their days as a Soviet satellite state

Ukraine was never a "Soviet satellite state". It was an integral republic of the Soviet Union, and the second most important one, from the first year of the Soviet Union.

List of the republics of the Soviet Union:
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (member since 1922) (population in 1989 147 million)
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1922) (52M)
Unbek Soviet Socialist Republic (1924) (20M)
Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (1936) (17M)
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (1922) (10M)
Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (1922) (7M)
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (1922) (5M)
Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (1929) 5M
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (1940) (4M)
Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (1936) (4M)
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (1940) (4M)
Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (1924) (4M)
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1922) (3M)
Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (1940) (3M)
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (1940) (2M)

The three Baltic republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) was disputed as an illegal occupation, but none of the others were.

The states referred to in some quarters as satellite states were such as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc. Most of them were People's Republics or Socialist Republics or Democratic Republics, but none had "Soviet" in their name. They were formally independent but heavily influenced by the Soviet Union.

Comment Re:There's another treatment that stops most T2 (Score 1) 253

Eating does involve a bit more than just taste however, and is a problematic issue I've had to deal with most of my life.

I should admit up front that I have the opposite problem as to the article being discussed.
I've had no sense of smell since age 3-4, and so there is a significant class of foods I simply can't taste at all. The texture of the food determines completely my enjoyment of eating it and even my ability to eat it.

For me a steak tastes about like cardboard, and the less well done it is cooked the worse it feels, which of course directly relates to how healthy it would be as burning the nutrients out can't be a good thing, despite the fact it changes the taste not at all for me to do so.

Green veggies tend to feel like between I'm chewing a corn husk and I'm trying to swallow semi-liquid slop that my body feels should already be going in the other direction. The phrase "choking it down" can be quite literal in such cases for me.

The main difference here I would imagine is that a lot of people dislike eating such healthier foods so instead of spending the (not insignificant) time to find the gems they do like, they fall back to crap food that gives a "full" feeling - while I personally take the equally unhealthy route of just simply not eating often enough thus avoiding the unpleasantness for similar reasons.

It's taken me a good 15 year period to actively try different and new things prepared by many different people other than myself to find those gems, and similar to applying security to IT it is one of those things that is on-going and never ends.
I can completely see why that prospect would be so overwhelming to some, as I was (or potentially still am) in that same camp.

When thinking of your next meal fills you with dread due to all of the horrible aspects of doing it right without a single positive in sight, falling back into comfort mode is terribly easy to do and can take as much constant effort to break out of usually attributed to the weakest willed of addicts trying to stay sober.

The advice "Meh you just suck, it's super simple!" is about as twisted as a slinky and as truthful as a politician.

Comment Re:Did they check under the couch cushions? (Score 5, Funny) 55

*cough* Well the bad news is I didn't find any vials of ebola in there *coughwheeze* just these empty vials ready for filling.

The good news *coughhack* can I keep this $0.78 in change? I'm saving up *sneezecolorscolors* for a flu shot - not feeling so well suddenly *sneezecoughsplatter* for some unknown reason...

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 261

I should point out native americans are still largely unemployed, stuck in reservations on land white American's didn't want. One of their few rays of hope being the ubiquitous Indian Casino where they are exacting their revenge. Still they are second class citizens.

Blacks were still being massively discriminated against until the Civil Rights act which was around 180 years later. They are still second class citizens.

The poor, they are still second class citizens.

Women are the one group doing pretty well for themselves though they are still underrepresnted in government.

Look around the room at a State of the Union address. The room is still overwhelming full of affluent white men.

As for the founding fathers brilliant ideas on governence, it exploded in a bloody civil war in 80 years.

You need look no further than where the U.S. congress, courts and presidency are today. They are a smoldering ruin. They have never been the great institutions Americans are brainwashed in to thinking they are. Are they better than totalitarian dictatorships, sure. Are they models the rest of the world can aspire too, no, not really.

American governement is the best government money can buy.

Comment Re:No (Score 3, Interesting) 261

Try reading Zinn's A People's History of the United States. It will disillusion you of the comic book U.S. History taught in U.S. school where the founding fathers are all saints and geniuses.

They were mostly self serving and profiteering. Its fitting Andrew Jackson is on the $20 dollar bill because he was infamous for profiteering off the battles he won, mostly by seizing the lands he took and splitting it up between himself and his friends.

Comment Re:The crackpot cosmology "theory" Du Jour (Score 1) 214

Anyone else sick of these fantasies? What ever happened to Occam's Razor?

Occam's Razor states that your personal theory that isn't testable is automatically false and invalid. The theory in the article that is testable may be right or wrong but we won't know until testing it.

Since your "faith" that everything you dislike must be wrong is automatically ruled out as an option, could you please stop posting useless tripe? The world would be a better place once people like you get your fingers out of science.

Comment Re:PPC macs were awful (Score 0) 236

I have to call bullshit.

I still have a Powermac 6100 that had an OS install (aka upgrade) when I first got it, and the thing is still sitting in my spare room and gets booted up once every 4-6 months or so purely for myself and friends to nostalgiabate over the BBS it still hosts.

That OS install is going on 22 or 23 years now.

My latest Powerbook is about 5 or 6 years old now, maybe a couple more. I've performed 2 upgrades to OS X and never a single reinstall.
The thing has out lived Apple selling replacement batteries and outlived two 3rd party batteries, and currently lives at my moms house as a small desktop for email and web browsing using the latest Firefox.

I've never encountered a Windows XP system that lived longer than 2 years, and those were special cases as most get crapped up in under 6 months when the end user has admin rights.

It hasn't been until Windows 7 that anyone not batshit insane would place the word stable next to "Windows Desktop".
I'll grant a batshit insane exception for the handful of people that were using Windows 2000 as desktops back then and knew what they were doing, but I've seen plenty of 2000 crapups needing a reinstall too.
Windows Server 2003 seems decently stable if you treat it like a server and not a desktop, but being honest with yourself you have to admit hardly anyone did that.
Seeing as the desktop pairing to 2003 was XP, and XP failed more often than not and for less reason than "none at all" which is what most peoples experiences are with, it's ingenious at best to compare the Mac OS or OS X experience with anything but desktop OSes.

Comment Re:Pairing? (Score 1) 236

MacOS definitely had its flaws, but as user of both since version 1.0 of both, I will take a Macintosh CS (current in 1991) running MacOS 6.8 or 7.0 ANYTIME over a Windows 3.11 386 machine.

Personally I would wait a year and a half for 1993 and get a Mac LC, then spring for a PDS card with 386 CPU.
Then you can run crappy Windows 2 or 3 natively to avoid the ignorant stares and comments by co-workers aged -5 to -15(*) who will run to post comments on slashdot, yet also be able to switch over to Mac OS to get real work done.
* No I can't believe kids making such comments today are more than 15 years old right now...

It is pretty hilarious however about all these kids complaining about MS Office. With the setup above MS Office is only available for Mac, for Windows 2 or 3 you would need WordPerfect instead since Microsoft had no office suite to run on their own OS.
Not that I'm bashing WordPerfect at all, but if MS Office is the extent of the argument then your only option for at home would be a Mac.

Comment Re:No (Score 4, Interesting) 261

The founding fathers weren't exactly the pillars of individual freedom you seem to think they were. They were an American centric elite and plutocracy trying to displace a Britsh centric elite and plutocracy, mostly so they could have a bigger cut of America's growing wealth.

You can tell because most of those constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights didn't apply to people who weren't affluent(i.e. who didn't own land), women, native American's, blacks/slaves and indentured whites. They applied mostly to white men who had wealth (at least enough to own land).

They actively prevented people who were not white, male and affluent from voting or holding office. They were mostly slave owners themselves, and they were for the most part very affluent and owners of very large real estate holdings. They were all 1%'ers.

The Declaration of Independence and Constitution were carefully designed to inspire support from enough people in the colonies for their Revolution to succeed, and to create the illusion of freedom, but they had no intention of relinquishing their power and control over the levers of government when it their Revolution did succeed. That plutocracy has never relinquished that control in the more than 200 years since.

The NSA along with the DHS, FBI, ATF and IRS are means for maintaining that control.

The Internet let a genie out of a bottle and created dangerous potentential for the rest of us to organize and try to win some of that power and control back.

When faced with the twin crises, and excuses, that were 9/11 and the 2008 crash it was nearly inevitable that The Powers That Be in the U.S. and U.K. would exploit every tool at their disposal, mainly computers and networks, to try to put a lid back on their control of their increasingly restless and networked homelands and to try to maintain their domination of the world as a whole in the face of increasing challenges.

The 2008 crash in particular resulted in widespread global disillusionment with the fact economies and governments are rigged to benefit the ruling elite and screw everyone else. When ruling elites start feeling that heat they trot out their police states, always have, always will.

Comment Re:Dark Matter = Phlogiston (Score 1) 37

When your theory of the Universe doesn't work, just make shit up until it does.

You mean like you just did?

If you believe dark matter does not exist, then why do we see it? Why do we also see it affecting other things? What in your limited opinion is causing that?

If you are attempting to claim an existing force or particle is causing those effects, then why does that violate the known definitions of all forces and particles known?

Why exactly do you believe a force that has characteristics not matching any existing forces would be anything other than a new force?

If you want to claim this force is an existing one, the burden of proof as to why it doesn't match up to any known force yet somehow is one of those forces is all on your head buddy.

Either explain up, or stop bitching about people who know what they are doing that claim it is a new force.

Comment Curious OS design shortcoming (Score 1) 151

Not an expert in OS design details, but I'm quite surprised there exists an OS which newly hands out the same PID a very recent process had. Do not PIDs monotonically increase until they wrap around? If not, why not? And why are they not based on adequately large integers? 32 bits for a minimum; why not 64? Yeah, it will uglify a ps display, but eyes on the security ball here. My 64-bit Arch linux on kernel 3.15 is saying 15 bits (cat /proc/sys/kernel/pid_max = 32768).

For that matter, Is there any reason not to make sure all PIDs issued on a given system for a given power cycle are unique? Yeah, it would be a tradeoff against performance.

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